Real World E-Commerce and Online Marketing: John C. Dvorak – a newspaper guy? Cripes, you cannot give a speech anymore without a blogger in the audience! If anyone is interested in this scorched earth talk I gave recently, I will have it transcribed and turned into a monograph. It’s pretty harsh on the newspaper business, but accurate.
But now I know John as a newspaper guy. John C. Dvorak was a speaker at a conference that I attended for a family owned newspaper chain.
John is a grouch. Lets get that straight. He doesn’t show up to win friends. I guess he has friends and doesn’t seek more.
His presentation seemed highly critical of the newspaper industry and I don’t think it was received warmly by most in attendance. It should have been. They should have been on the edge of their seats taking notes.
Perhaps nobody was taking notes, but they sure weren’t sneaking out.
Found by Aric Mackey.
So its difficult to adjust your business model…what a crybaby.
I would in deed be interested in reading this.
Anyone who has gone to j-school knows “cranky.” What’s the deal? We’re cranky cuz we actually care.
Hope the rest of the world gets it. Can’t wait to read the transcript, John.
I get zero information from newspapers anymore. I may pick one up on a weekend to read during breakfast but that is it. Paper newspapers are so last century.
Brendal,
What is “j-school”?
Thanks!
>>What is “j-school”?
You’re obviously not hip and happening if you don’t know what J-school is. Gosh! Think about where Lois Lane got her training….
My problem with the daily newspaper is it’s just a hash of the news you’ve already seen on the internet and TV news stations the night before. Why not release a newspaper later in the day with that day’s breaking news? You have a newspaper for the morning commute, you have a newspaper for the evening commute.
Cripes, I had to look and see if the poor bugger was a mate of mine.
I hang out – mostly online, I admit – with a few folks handling Web content for traditional media. One of them even did an internship at TechTV.
This tale is exactly what I hear from them any time we have a “state of the gig” discussion about what’s going on in “modern” American journalism.
The saddest part is – as I think we all would recognize – it doesn’t have to be bass-ackwards.
I’d certainly like to read a transcription if you create one. Thanks John.
I’d be interested in reading a transcript of your talk, John… very interesting stuff!
I quit buying papers 3 years ago.I read one occasionally in a restaurant.They are dead for me because they are such a tremendous waste of paper.Newspaper and radio guys don’t get it and never will.
I also would like to read this. As with #4, Improbus I also don’t read the printed paper anymore. Most of the national and international news is off the AP wire, same as yahoo except yahoo is free and more timely.
So, why newspapers? Except for boring news from a small town and coupons, I don’t see the reason for most of them anymore.
A while back I ran into Lawrence (Kansas) – an excellent newspaper website. They post more images online, audio, video etc. An excellent example of what can be done with a newspaper online. ljworld.com – their traditional news stuff and their entertainment type website lawrence.com .
The tech department spawned django – the web dev platform.
Egon said print was dead in 1984. Everyone else is just catching up.
And JCD, you have a whole blog full of friends. The fact that hack didn’t even mention dvorak.org/blog should tell you something.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Major butt kisser.
To add a little extra, if I were a major newspaper today, I would seriously consider moving most of my reporting from current events to commentary and editorializing.
So, if I owned the NY Times, I would be quick to realize that reprinting what can be had for free from the internet is a loosing strategy. I would capitalize on what I have which is wanted but not free, international and local editorials and scoops on the local scene.
This guy’s full of shit. I met Mr. Dvorak some years back at the San Francisco Hilton. He was a speaker at the ONEBBSCON and I was attending. One night after a long day I headed back to the hotel and went to the bar where I saw him and bunch of others shootin the breeze so I sat in. WE lost the hours discussing the demise of BBS’s and the bright future of the internet (Internet Explorer was still known as Mosaic). I found him to be quite amicable, but he sure as hell wasn’t one to mince words.
The newspaper industry as a whole will likely be dead within 20 years. It’s been dying a slow, agonizing death for a while now and honestly, I don’t know anyone who sits down to read the paper anymore.
I get my news via the internet or tv, when I can see what’s actually happening as it’s happening. I don’t want to sit down for an hour and skip over ad after ad in the newspaper when I can skim headlines for 10 minutes on a website, or listen to as I eat dinner.
What also isn’t said is that most, feed the same line politically. Leftist stuff sells only to leftist, and they all have the same take and information.
You need some papers that are leftist leaning, some nationalist leaning, neutral-fact based papers, etc. In other words rather than bi-partisian you need actual fighting and argument. But then again that’s not the Demoncrats overall plan, is it?
Why would you buy a fish wrapper, that says exactly what the TV and internet says. No real background, no additional indepth information and often no information at all, just opion and propaganda. I can waste my money on something else. It’s time for the newspapers to eitehr hire more reporter and finially go after the local dirt in local government, instead of sucking up to every elected offical in hopes of a government position, or face erradication in the face of an internet where freedom of choice and source is abundantly avaliable.
I’m betting that the Marxist in the papers would rather see them go down in flames than give up their soap box and propaganda tool.
But then again whatever, bye bye Maxist propaganda tool. The Muslim Obama might feel like sponsoring a USA Maxist rag to employ the few hundred reporters left in the US.
Maybe they will be outsourced to India also, it’s not like they can’t do the same thing our own reporters do, which amounts to just republishing the memos from the government or whoever is being discussed. I’d bet that even a computer could do the job without any real problem.
Enough of them are foreigners now that it wouldn’t be any real loss anyway, so bye bye propaganda tool – maybe if TV goes away Americans can learn to think for themselves and not just parrot a party line.
Traaxx
#18–amodedoma==you say JCD is amicable and doesn’t mince words. Does that mean friendly and a straight shooter? How does that make him FOS? Lets have a single detail that supports this rather than goes against this? Details==did he allow you to pay for your own drinks or what has your panties in a bunch?
I’m very curious about the picture posted. Looks like the Great Fire of London but based in Russia? But Red Square is no where near a bridge and London does not have Onion Topped Buildings. Constantinople?
Could we have a larger picture please?